You don't need a study to tell you most parents don't have time to study all the studies. They're a bit tied up, you see, ferrying children to birthday parties and swimming lessons, reading hippo board books, matching up socks and micro-waving peas.

It’s not that we don’t care about the studies. We do, very much. Perhaps too much. We see headlines about the latest research on plastic containers, or yelling, or the microwaving of peas, and our hearts begin to thud. We promise ourselves to read that story thoroughly, once little Liam is asleep, to track reaction from the mommy-blogger community, to ask the pediatrician about it at the next checkup.

Take the latest study on childhood snoring, published in Pediatrics. U.S. researchers analyzed more than 13,000 children from infancy to the age of seven and found that kids who snore a lot or have other breathing problems at night are more likely to have behavioural and emotional problems later in life.

The results make perfect sense. If you can’t sleep properly, you’re going to be crusty. But for parents whose children snore, research like this only feeds worry. What do you do? Rush to the doctor, demand drugs, surgery? Experiment with homeopathic alternatives (often a laborious process in itself)? Let the kid saw logs and hope they still turn out?

Most of us end up running to "Dr. Google," as Sandra Martin calls it. The executive editor of Today's Parent may be immersed in the parenting world, but she has as much trouble as anyone else sifting through the studies, never mind the health information floating around on the Internet.

Martin has a five-year-old daughter who snores and was recently given the thumbs-up for a tonsillectomy. Isobel has been chronically sick since she started kindergarten; her enlarged tonsils and adenoids may be to blame for the fevers, as well as the snoring.

"I want my kid to feel better," Martin said. "It’s hard on all of us for a kid to be sick every month."

"If I haven’t rested, I’m snapping, I don’t handle things in the best way. And as a kid you’re still figuring things out."

Martin hasn’t decided yet whether she’ll go ahead with the surgery. She agrees the abundance of health information and opinions online can cripple parents, especially if they’re leaning toward conventional medicine: "There’s almost a critical view of parents who seem like they’re too inclined medically." Moms and dads get labelled "shortcut parents" if they opt for pills and procedures. So many just don’t talk about the fact their kid is getting a tonsillectomy, even if it might help the child feel better.

"We’re in this culture of sharing, where we talk about our kids’ bowel movements, their every milestone, but I think that actually heightens parents’ insecurities about their decisions."

Dr. Mark Feldman with the Canadian Paediatric Society isn’t as worried about how parents react to medical studies in the news as he is about all the crazy stuff they read (and believe) on the web. He has a practice in Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children and regularly deals with parents who’ve already diagnosed and found a cure for their kid, based on word of mouth, random blog posting or online salesperson.

"Parents come to me having read a website where someone’s trying to sell them a product and they believe it hook, line and sinker," Feldman said. "It’s spotting the conflict of interest." If a site has ads, for example, you ought to take the info with a grain of salt, he said.

The best studies are randomized, double-blind controlled trials, Feldman explained, followed by observational research (like that recent snoring study). Expert opinion based on consensus is third-best.

Martin says it’s critical that moms and dads trust in their ability to make smart health decisions, and never mind what someone on the Internet did, or how others might judge them. "Parents don’t have any confidence in knowing they can do the right thing for their children."

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